The Art of the Market: Two Centuries of American Business as Seen Through Its Stock Certificates Book

Bulls, bears, and the price of shares-the daily tallies of the stock market are on everyone's mind. The contemporary investor usually measures ownership via a confirmation blip on the computer screen; nevertheless, since the eighteenth century, stock certificates have visually charted the evolution of American industry. Now highly collectible, these documents are the ultimate melding of art and commerce, and The Art of the Market 200 years' worth of stocks on their artistic rather than their financial merits. In the days before advertising and annual reports, the stock certificate projected a company's image of quality to the world through artwork and embellishments that epitomized the times-from the bold engravings of locomotives stamped on the shares of nineteenth-century railroad tycoons, to the sleek Art Deco styling from the early automobile era, to the graphic images for today's high-tech media giants. The Art of the Market presents more than 200 certificates that collectively render America's social and economic history through wars and peace, panics and prosperity. Each certificate is fully analyzed in artistic terms, while the lively text offers a compelling historic background on the capitalist mosaic.Read More